While providing various services, service providers allow users to choose their preferences to customize the behaviours of applications according to their needs and situations. Currently, the PoC application developed by OMA allows users to configure service settings like Incoming Session Barring, Answer Mode, Incoming Instant Personal Alert Barring, Simultaneous PoC Session Support Settings, etc. Also, the SIMPLE (SIP for Instant Messaging and Presence Leveraging Extensions) IM application developed by OMA defines service settings like Incoming Session Barring, Incoming IM Pager Mode Barring, Delivery of Deferred Messages, etc. New applications under development also have similar service settings. A user makes use of his/her client application to indicate his preferences to respective application servers. Some applications of the prior art are identified as will be described below:
As an example, FIG. 1 illustrates OMA-developed SIMPLE IM and PoC applications. For other applications, there are similar architectures. The interfaces used for publishing service settings in the prior art are designated by dotted lines. It should be noted that each client application publishes service settings onto its own application server and thus multiple service setting may be published.
A flow diagram showing a process of publishing service settings by a user is illustrated in FIG. 2.
SIP PUBLISH is a method used for publishing service settings onto an application server via an SIP interface. Usually, service setting publication occurs after each registration, and also occurs as and when a user wants to update/refresh his service settings (S210). The application server 111, 121 stores such user preferences and executes as and when applicable (S230).
The aforementioned prior art has the following limitations:    I. Increasing number of applications will lead to storage of user preferences in a distributed manner.    II. Increases the number of service setting publications.    III. Complex for a user to manage service settings.    IV. Increases cost.